1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and system for transmitting information over a communication network. More specifically, the invention relates to a method and system for transmitting information over a communication network comprising a user device and a server wherein the user device receives the information from or via this server.
2. Background
In recent years the creation, manipulation and distribution of information has become a major economic activity. Technological developments and business developments in this area have shown significant progress. Technological developments include the various kinds of developments relating to the internet and the recent efforts to realize state-of-the art services using wireless networks, like GSM, GPRS and UMTS. Parallel to these technological developments people cudgel their brains about how to apply the enormous technological possibilities in a commercially interesting way. Many business models have been discussed (see http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html), but only few of them have ‘proved’ to be relatively successful.
General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) is a packet-based wireless communication service that promises data rates from 56 up to 114 Kbps and continuous connection to the Internet for mobile phone and computer users. The introduction of GPRS has resulted in a new business model for providing internet access. The user pays for the data volume (i.e., the number of bytes) transmitted over the network, instead of per unit of time of connection to the network or a flat fee rate. For the average user, the concept of data volume is hard to comprehend and moreover a user normally is not aware of the data volume of a particular information page. Within the GPRS business model as described above, this information is crucial, since the data volume determines the costs of the GPRS-usage.
Another problem arises since not all user devices are suited to retrieve a particular information page from the internet or these pages cannot be satisfactorily displayed on the user device. It might be that a user device, such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), suited to retrieve certain information pages wirelessly from the internet is trying to retrieve information from a information page which is not suited for PDA-access. The user will experience that it takes a considerable amount of time before the information page is retrieved by the PDA, and moreover that the page cannot or is incorrectly displayed on the PDA. However, since the user has retrieved the page, he has to pay for the data retrieved by the PDA in the usage-based business model. It will be appreciated that this user will be dissatisfied.